


ghosts and locked doors

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, lapslock, proposal, set abt a year after After Laughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: (sequel to after laughter.)toby proposes.





	ghosts and locked doors

**Author's Note:**

> (i hope you don't mind but this is a lapslock, no capital letter story - felt more appropriate for the stream of consciousness vibe.)

\--

the night starts off simply, like so many of their nights have. it’s friday, it’s been a long week, and spencer is desperately glad to be done with the work week. as much as she loves her job, it’s been murder this week; that, along with studying for the bar exam (a decision she has made, as much as anything, because she knows her father thinks she’s incapable of it), has just about drained her. she is excited for the weekend, in the mundane way she gets to be excited about things now. they don’t have many plans; dinner tonight, sunday brunch with jason and aria. (they have invited them separately, hoping, as they have been for a long time, that they will leave together.)

overall: simplistic, together, and typical, the way their lives have settled into being.

_ or so she thinks. _

as they wind through the streets of rosewood in his truck, the radio up, the late afternoon 

sun fading out slowly and painting the sky a million hues of pink, chatting gently about work, she feels the kind of happiness that hasn’t come in a long time. day to day happiness is always, the calm and serenity of a stable life, too, is constant, but this flash of joy, of sunsets and the radio, hasn’t settled into her bones in a long time. it feels like the best parts of sixteen, feels like graduating law school, feels like there’s so much left of life and she wants to enjoy every minute of it.

toby slows at a traffic light and she reaches over and kisses him at the cheek, surprising him into laughter.

“what was that for?”

“i just love you.”

she categorizes her emotions as the light turns green and he speeds, but the only one that comes up clearly is  _ alive. _

the dinner is delectable; she doesn’t notice that the restaurant is a notch fancier than usual, only that their conversation seems a little more excitable than usual. she chalks it up to the friday buzz -- and it’s been a while, after all, since they went out to dinner. on the joint salary of a carpenter and a case law editor, they do not have too much extra.

but that night there is champagne in ice buckets next to their table, roses in the center, and she feels so, so  _ alive _ as their conversation buzzes, laughter seeming the inevitable punctuation of each comment.

and yet somehow -  _ somehow -  _ she is still shocked beyond reason when, after dessert, when she is drowsy and thinking of sleep, he pulls from his pocket a small, velvet box.

it’s when she realizes there might be nothing typical about this weekend.

* * *

the joy, unadulterated, lasts several hours, but of course nothing is so simple.

for most of their high school lives, spencer thought that she and toby traded off being ghosts. it was almost impossible for them to be people at the same time, and that was almost understandable.

in the darkness eleven years stronger, she listens to him breathing. she holds up her hand and a beam of moonlight glints off of the diamond on her finger.

her chest aches. she has never been so happy. she has never been so sad.

she doesn’t think she deserves this.

* * *

_ in her second year of college she said unthinkable things and he said exactly what she needed to hear but she ignored him and said more unthinkable things. in her second year of college she felt the swell of terror overcome her while waiting for the reading on a pregnancy test, and with it came all the rest. she remembered, absurdly, of being in the dollhouse, of four walls with no windows and a door that didn’t open and thinking this would be her whole life. she looked at the white stick, flipped over, and thought of four walls  with no windows and a door that didn’t open. _

_ she looked at toby, who had always been her open window, the sun coming through, her safe place to land. she looked down at the white stick. she looked at toby and she saw a closed door. _

_ - _

_ that night, after the stick told her she wasn’t pregnant but she told him to leave anyway because she couldn’t imagine staying with him after thinking of him as a closed door, she cried so hard she felt all the life drain out of her through and she thought  _ it hasn’t hurt this much since high school _. that night she phoned aria, then hanna, then emily, and no one picked up the phone, and she thought  _ it didn’t even hurt this much in high school.

* * *

eleven years stronger, he catches her hands in his as she moves them through the air, trying to an illustrate a point that she can’t quite keep hold on. it is midnight. she can’t sleep. he found her in the kitchen over a cup of peppermint tea.

“we could’ve been happier, you know?.”

“we are happy. and we were happy.”

“but we could have been happier. if i hadn’t, if i didn’t.”

“spence.”

he sits down across from her. “spence,” he repeats. “come back to sleep.”

her hands are shaking. “i can’t sleep,” she says. “i’m going to dream about it if i sleep.”

“you’re not.” he extends his hand across the table and she lets him take hers in his. “you’re not, because i’m going to be right there.”

she exhales. “i hurt you so much. for so long. i’m so sorry. and i shouldn’t be doing, not now, not tonight - this was the  _ best  _ night, toby, i don’t mean - ”

“spencer. come to bed. please.”

she rises, allows him to lead her back to bed. she lies down next to him, rests her head on his chest, and as she falls gentle into sleep she thinks she hears him murmuring in his ear,  _ you could never hurt me. you never could have hurt me. _

it’s a lie, one traded for all the millions she’s told him, at the top of the list that time she told him she did not love him.

he caresses her hands, his finger bumping carefully over the ring, and she thinks she does not deserve it, does not deserve him.

* * *

_ in england, they stood  on a bridge overlooking the riveria and she rested her head on his shoulder, feeling wholly alive for the first time in a long time. _

_ “are we real?” _

_ “of course we’re real.” _

_ “i think we were ghosts. i think for a long time, we were both ghosts.” _

_ he put an arm around her, pulling her in closer. “i know what you mean.” his voice felt  like it should bounce across the water and reach the people they once were but it was instead quiet, for her ears alone, just like the rest of him. “looking back, it doesn’t -- it’s not -- ” _

_ “no one could have survived that.” here, almost a decade later, it felt just about safe to say so. “no one should have. we couldn’t have been alive for all of it. sometimes we were just ghosts, passing the time.” _

_ “i think we took turns.” _

_ “hm?” _

_ “like, i think sometimes you were real. and sometimes i was real. but you were right. it was hard to be real at the same time.” _

_ “but we are now.” _

_ she felt so expansively happy, she felt like forever, she looked at toby and she thinks, i can’t wait to marry this boy. _

* * *

she creeps out of bed when she is sure he’s asleep, when his breathing evens and he falls to the side, his arms crossed limp over his chest. that old warsan shire poem threads through her mind:  _ even in sleep you could feel him drifting away from you in his dreams, so -- what did you want to do love? split his head open? _

she tugs his sweater tighter around her shoulders and goes back to the kitchen, placing her phone on the table in front of her. even after all these years - even after everything - at twenty seven, she still has to take deep, even breaths before using her phone. still has to remind herself that she is not in fact sixteen. that no one will reach through the phone to kill her.

she wishes all the time she lived in a world where such a though was entirely irrational. (mona in a parisian doll shop.) she is so tired. her fingers shaking, she scrolls through her phone, pressing down on  _ aria  _ and praying with everything she no longer fully believes in that aria picks up the phone.

aria always picks up the phone, now.

“spence,” she murmurs, voice thick with sleepiness. “are you okay?”

“i’m,” she swallows, “i’m - aria?”

“yeah?” a yawn, followed by a much more awake, more sharply delivered tone. “spence? do you need me to come over?”

“no, i. i’m okay. i’m happy.” she identifies the feeling as true -- just about. she is happy. she is happy.

but in recent years she has learned that happiness can live next door to so much more, and that sadness is a nosy neighbor.

“he proposed,” she says finally, feeling the truth in the words, feeling the joy, the terror, the sorrow, the exhilaration. “he proposed, aria -- ”

“oh my god,  _ spence!”  _ for a second they’re fifteen, the good kind of fifteen. “he did  _ what?  _ oh my  _ god!  _ you’re going to get -  _ spencer!”  _

she is quiet.

“wait, oh my god - ”her voice changes, softens, settles into the tired, divorced woman she has become (don’t think like that) “did you - spence? did you say yes?”

“yes,” she says. “of course.”

“then, what’s wrong?”

“nothing. everything is - perfect. the way he asked me, the whole night, it was - it was all perfect.” she feels the truth of the words. she wishes only one thing could be true at a time. “it is perfect.”

“then, what’s wrong?”

she sighs, exhales, spreading her fingers across the table, looks at her hands, at the diamond ring on her finger, thinks of everything that is wrong. thinks, perhaps more importantly, everything that is right.

“it’s perfect,” she repeats. “and i’m, well. i’m me.”

aria makes a noise of understanding. “spencer?” she says. “i know. but, you know you do deserve this. right?”

“i don’t. there’s no  _ possible  _ way i - ”

“you do. i promise. you deserve this. you deserve everything you want, spencer.”

“i don’t, though. i - i’ve hurt him too many times. i’ve broken everything too many times. and aria, i  _ left. _ ”

“okay. it happens.”

“i left. i looked at him, and i, i,” the words are bubbling of her lips, she is desperate for absolution and at once she is desperate to be damned, “i looked at him that time in college and i saw a closed door. i thought i was pregnant and i thought about forever and i  _ couldn’t take it,  _ and i  _ didn’t want it. _ and i  _ left. _ so what right -- ” her voice catches. she hopes, dearly, that toby is still sleeping. “what  _ right  _ do i have to stay now?”

“anyone would’ve thought of a pregnancy test as a closed door at nineteen,” says aria, and spencer feels expansively, eternally grateful for aria, whom she has never told this before, and who takes it all in strides and keeps going (though it makes her wonder, in the tiniest way, what aria might be hiding from her right back -- after all these years, there are still secrets.) “leaving at nineteen doesn’t mean being alone forever.”

“he’s too good. too good for me.”

“you are spencer  _ goddamn  _ hastings.”

she takes a deep, long breath.

“i know.”

“i know you know. but - if you don’t want to marry him - ”

“i do. aria - ” so many truths exist within her at the same time right now, but there is one, overwhelming and overpowering, that she believes in her core. “aria.. i want this  _ so much. _ ”

“then it’s what you get,” says aria. “spencer, we get everything we want now.”

maybe this too, is true. and maybe it’s damnation and absolution at the same time, and maybe all she wants now is to go back to bed, rest her head on toby’s chest, and sleep till morning.

wake with a diamond ring on her finger, and all the uncertainty of tonight forgotten.

marry him in front of everyone she loves, take his name and share her life with him forever.

a life of opened doors and opened windows and no secrets at all.

the possibility of it makes something in her soften, makes something in her ready, now, for sleep. “yeah,” she says. “yeah. i - ”

“i love you. i’m so  _ so  _ happy for you.”

she’s happy too. and maybe it doesn’t have to be marred by everything else she feels. because at least -- just like in the car on the way to dinner tonight -- she feels so, so  _ alive. _

she’d rather be a nuanced, exhausted, and mostly happy human than the ghost she once was.

(and maybe it was the ghost version of her that left all those years ago.)

(funny how it’s the real version of her that can float straight through doors, that can will down all obstacles in her path.)

she gets off the phone after her version of thanking her best friend (never necessary, hardly ever even accepted) and crawls, grateful grateful grateful, back into bed.

toby stirs. “you okay, baby?” he murmurs, and she takes his hand in sleep, feeling so much, but, like the end of dinner again, mostly just sleepy.

“i’m  _ so  _ good,” she whispers, and despite everything, it’s just about true.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> :) i hope this lived up to expectations. i don't know if it will continue into a series, but i hope you enjoyed this piece regardless!


End file.
